The marginal value of informal access to health care

To assess the importance of unequal access to medical expertise and services, we estimate the causal effects of having a child who is a doctor on parents’ mortality and health care use. We use data from parents of almost 22,000 participants in admission lotteries to medical school in the Netherlands. Our findings indicate that informal access to medical expertise and services is not an important cause of differences in health care use and mortality.

That is from “Do Doctors Improve the Health Care of Their Parents? Evidence from Admission Lotteries,” by Elisabeth Artmann, Hessel Oosterbeek, and Bas van der Klaauw, in the new American Economic Journal: Applied Economics.  Here are earlier, ungated versions.

Comments

Comments for this post are closed